The Dancing Queen

In the introduction to her screenplay for
the film Orlando, the multi-talented Sally
Potter writes: I grew up as part of an aesthetic
movement that was all about taking stories apart and
looking at the lies that conventional storytelling might
tell. Orlando tells a lot of lies. Based
upon Virginia Woolfs novella of the same name, it
follows the life of a nobleman from his youth at the time
of Queen Elizabeth to her youth in nineteen-nineties
Britain. Thats right: Orlando lives 400 years
without ageing, changing sex at the age of two hundred.

But
Potter also writes in that introduction that: Orlando
became a personal catchword for work that dared to
be epic, non-realistic and completely believable in its
own terms. And Orlando is completely
believable in its own terms. Even the arrival of Angel
Somerville (Jimmy not Julia) at the end makes a certain
sort of sense. Moreover, despite the films
obviously fantastical elements, the wisdom it speaks far
outweighs the lies.

This wisdom is encapsulated in the lyrics to Jimmys
closing song, Coming:

I am coming! I am coming!
I am coming through!
Coming across the divide to you.
In this moment of unity
Im feeling only an ecstasy
To be here, to be now
At last I am free-
Yes - at last, at last
To be free of the past
And of a future that beckons me.

I am coming! I am coming!
Here I am!
Neither a woman nor a man -
We are joined, we are one
With a human face
We are joined, we are one
With a human face
I am on earth
And I am in outer space
Im being born and I am dying.

Potters latest film, The
Tango Lesson, is epic,
realistic, and completely believable in its own terms. It
tells the tale of a film director named Sally Potter who
becomes disenchanted with her lastest screenplay, Rage;
abandons it; takes up tango lessons with a choreographer
and dancer named Pablo Veron; and decides to make a film
about him. The choreographer and dancer is played by a
choreographer and dancer named Pablo Veron. Sally Potter
is played by Potter, who did give up on a
screenplay called Rage to make the film. The
film is shot in black and white. Slashes of Rage are
splashed around, soaked in Orlandoesque colour.
Some commentators have assumed that it is a documentary.
But the film is more than that. Just as Orlando is more
than just an entertaining fantasy. Potter comments:

Virginia Woolf wrote a fiction based on a love
story she had in real life with Vita Sackville West, and
based on research into Vita Sackville Wests family
history, and it was in a way not just about Vita
Sackville West but about England. It was Virginia Woolf,
if you like, making a documentary about England. Through
a fictitious story about an immortal character who lives
for 400 years. The fact is that fiction, which literally
means something that is not true, is one of the most
accurate ways that any culture has produced to tell the
truth about itself. Theres an essential paradox in
the form which goes back to the roots of storytelling and
myth.

So [The Tango Lesson], its all
truth and its all lies. I discovered whilst I was
making it that I had in a way to invent a subgenre, to
juggle with those elements. It is fiction. And its
real. But real life doesnt happen exactly like
that. I always refer to her [the Sally Potter character]
as she. It was a version of myself. It was like lending
my image, my identity, as almost like a kind of double
bluff cover thing. At times I felt like a spy, spying on
my own life in order to use the material in order to tell
a tale. Ultimately, there were two yardsticks. Does this
obey the laws of fiction [and] in which ways do I wish to
break those laws? [And] does it ring true? Do I recognise
a gut honesty in it that will help people to realise
their own secret lives too?

Like Orlando, The Tango Lesson explores
myths of fact and fiction.

Photo: Abbie Trayle-Smith

Potter first made her mark as a dancer and
choreographer. But she considers herself first and
foremost to be a director:

I started as a director. When I was fourteen.
And then, how to become a film director at fourteen is
not self-evident. And it was a long and winding road
which necessitated stepping sideways: this way, that way,
the other way. But with hindsight I now realise that all
the decisions that I made along the line whether that was
to be dancer for a while, a singer for a while, a
performance artist, whatever, its all facets in
fact of film-making, and the skill of directing, for
which there is no real training. You have to know a
little bit about a lot of things.

At school I had already directed shows, but as a
fourteen-year-old it was with an 8mm camera. And then,
the London Filmmakers co-op was just about starting up,
and I used to go and watch hours of films. Independent,
underground films, anything. And we would go and rummage
in the dustbins in Soho for out of date film stock and
use that. Were not talking low-budget filmmaking,
were talking no-budget filmmaking. Instead of going
to filmschool, I learnt on the job with scraps of this
and that and then trod the boards, as a dancer.

I think that often the big life steps that one
takes are taken unconciously. I think its very rare
for somebody to know from the very beginning, Im
going to be that, and stick with that. You have a dream,
but you face so many discouragements along the way. But I
think often our unconsious is steering us in ways that
are much more intelligent than we think.

For example, when I started my dance training
when I was twenty-one, and I had already been trying to
be a film-director for six years by then, my friends said
to me What the fuck are you doing going into dance?
Its just seen as that really girly thing to do
compared to this really thrilling ambition to be a film
director. But instinctively something in my gut knew that
if I did it, something was going to happen. I probably
couldnt have measured it out and said: If I
do a dance training, I will learn how to work.

Because that is what I really learnt. Dancers go
in every morning at nine and do a class whether theyve
got a hang-over, whether theyve got no sleep,
whether theyre in the mood or not. Inspiration is
irrelevant. Its all about discipline. Now that is
the single biggest lesson that any filmmaker needs to
learn. Discipline. Organisation. You never rely on
inspiration. So I learnt that through dancing.

In the introduction to the screenplay to
Orlando, Potter writes: Orlando was
a celebration of impermanence. Through the vehicle of
Orlandos apparent immortality we experience the
mutability of all things and relationships. Talking
of dance, she remarks: Youre in the moment,
its ephemeral, its gone, gone in a puff of
dust. And thats the magic of it. One thinks
of Somervilles song. To be here, to be now/
At last I am free-/ Yes - at last, at last/ To be free of
the past/ And of a future that beckons me. Potter
continues, The glorious thing about [dance] is also
the tragedy about it. You do it and its gone.
By capturing dance on film, Potter is combining the
ephemeral with the (relatively) eternal. The Tango
Lesson not only shares its predecessors
concerns with fact and fiction. It also shares its
concern with time.

Potter is forty-seven. She started
dancing at the age of twenty-one, which in dance circles
is ancient. ANCIENT. Wrinkly. She started
learning the tango at the age of forty-three, yet she
dances superbly in many of the films magical dance
scenes. Inextricable from the concern with time is a
concern with age:

Nothing is ever too old or too young for
anything. Everything about age is a crap myth. Every age
is the perfect age, and every dream is realisable. O.K.,
if you decide youre going to be an Olympic
triathlete at the age of sixty, certain things are
stacked against you. But theyve dicovered that
ninety-year-olds, whove never been in a gym before
in their lives, after six weeks of careful training can
have the muscle tone of a thirty-year-old. In other
words, most of the stereotypes we have about age are
absolute rubbish.

Absolute rubbish, perhaps, but an absolute rubbish
that makes the lives of the many who believe them
absolutely miserable. Another myth of our times is that
men mature, whilst women just grow old. An attractive man
is an old man. An attractive woman is not yet a woman.
Potters films stand such stereotypes upon their
heads. Orlando becomes a woman when he is entering her
dotage. Potter is every bit a woman as Veron is a man.
Equally, Potter is every bit a man as Veron is a woman.
The film ends with another song, with lyrics again penned
by Potter. Lyrics again expressing the joys of unity
within disparity:

One is one
And one are two,
You are me,
I am you.

The Tango Lesson,
then, is a very different film from Orlando.
But it is also very similar. Within a very different
structure and form, it again explores myths of fact and
fiction, myths of time and space and gender. More
importantly, perhaps, it is again a very charming film.
Differently charming. Similarily charming. Go and be one
with it.